Kerr County, Texas, Sheriff Larry Leitha endorsed Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom for U.S. president and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, for vice president.

A rumor that circulated online in early September 2025 claimed Kerr County, Texas, Sheriff Larry Leitha endorsed Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom for U.S. president and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, for vice president.

According to the story, Leitha experienced a change of heart after a Mexican rescue team allegedly saved his family from the devastating Fourth of July weekend flash floods. The Associated Press reported in August that the flooding killed at least 136 people, including many children, and that three people remained missing.

On Sept. 3, TikTok creator @nurturing.memorials posted a photo of Leitha with the overlayed text, “Texas Kerr county sheriff, Larry Leitha has endorsed Gavin Newsom for president and Jasmine Crockett as his VP. He did a 180 after his family was saved from Texas floods by Mexican rescue team.” The post — featuring the John Denver song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” — received more than 964,000 views, 165,800 likes, 4,600 comments, 6,800 bookmarks and 8,400 shares, as of this writing. Other users shared this rumor on Facebook, Instagram (archived), Threads (archived) and TikTok.

(@nurturing.memorials/TikTok)

A similar post (archived) on the @nurturing.memorials TikTok account appeared days earlier, on Aug. 26, featuring a caption also saying Leitha endorsed Newsom and Crockett.

Some commenters seemed to interpret the rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events. However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no local or national news media outlets publishing articles about Leitha endorsing Newsom and Crockett — a matter that would be at least a locally reported story. That information, plus a number of other factors laid out later in this article, led Snopes to determine Leitha did not, in fact, endorse Newsom and Crockett.

We emailed both Leitha and the Kerr County Joint Information Center to ask about the rumor circulating on social media. We also sent a private TikTok message to @nurturing.memorials, and will update this article if we receive more information.

We previously reported about a false rumor claiming Leitha said he would apply for a green card for a Mexican rescue team that allegedly saved his family during the floods. In that investigation, we found no evidence of a rescue team saving Leitha’s family. We also located no information to confirm another rumor claiming Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent rescue teams to help with the efforts in Texas.

Leitha and other officials spoke on about the flood response before a legislative session in Kerrville on July 31. The Texas Tribune reported that Leitha, Kerr County Judge and head of county emergency management Rob Kelly and emergency management coordinator William Thomas all acknowledged they were asleep in the initial hours after the overnight flooding began to unfold. The reporting also said Kelly was at his lake house at Lake Travis, with Kelly acknowledging to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick he did not attend at least one meeting following the July 4 flooding.

Digging into the rumor

In addition to the lack of news media outlets reporting the alleged news of Leitha endorsing Newsom and Crockett, the @nurturing.memorials TikTok account featured the display name of “Newsom/ Crockett 2028 .” It also referenced trolling in its bio: “Trolling the Trolls…. President Newsom will make America Great Again.” That display name, combined with the “trolling the trolls” mission, clearly signaled whoever was managing the account sought to “troll” users with made-up content, including promoting the idea of a Newson-Crockett ticket for 2028.

A user managing the TikTok account chose to like comments that called out the content as not being true — another hint of the rumor’s fabricated origins. Further, the account’s oldest post was from Aug. 25, and other posts also made false or unfounded statements. For example, one post (archived) read, “President Gavin Newsom reveals that Jasmine Crockett is the only person qualified to be his VP and AOC will be WH chief of staff!!” Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo located no record of Newsom formally announcing a run for president, nor any news of him selecting Crockett as a running mate.

The Yahoo search did, however, display an inaccurate answer generated by artificial intelligence. That information incorrectly presented Crockett’s first name as “LaTonda” and began, “Gavin Newsom has chosen LaTonda Crockett as his running mate for the upcoming election. Crockett, a seasoned political figure, brings a wealth of experience in public service and community engagement.”

Yahoo’s AI-generated summary presented inaccurate information with a made-up first name for Crockett. (Yahoo)

For further reading, we recently published an in-depth investigation documenting the mass of celebrity misinformation circulating on Facebook following the Texas flash floods — an effort reaching as far away as Vietnam.